John Hagel

Similar to a wealth advisor or wellness coach/personal trainer, the trusted advisor role presents a huge growth opportunity for businesses. These advisors proactively make recommendations aligned with its customers’ best interests, to create real value for the customer. The biggest challenge for companies trying to employ and market the services of such trusted advisors? Becoming trusted.

As consumers, we expect the world to shape itself around us. Consumer power has been growing for the past several years, and with it, an expectation of products and services that not only meet our particular tastes but also our particular needs over time. But engaging the customer isn’t always straightforward. Even if you’re listening to customers, what if they don’t (or can’t) articulate what they want? What if they have needs they aren’t even aware of yet?

In his 1992 novel “Snow Crash,” Neal Stephenson envisioned the Metaverse: a three-dimensional manifestation of the Internet in which people interact and collaborate via digitally-constructed avatars. In the decades since, technology has advanced to the point where such a place no longer seems like science fiction. Stephenson’s Metaverse is a virtual reality space, a completely immersive computer-generated experience whose users have minimal ability to interact with the real world. In contrast to this fictional vision is today’s burgeoning field of augmented reality (AR), a technology that superimposes visual information or other data in front of one’s view of the real world.

Our physical world is now technology-enabled by the digitization of everything from books to movies to tools—such as the flashlights, cameras, calculators, day planners, music players, and bus schedules that now reside on our smartphones. The Internet and digital technology is most powerful when it is married back into our physical world; when atoms and bytes converge. This intersection also happens to be the source of greatest potential for the Internet of Things (IoT). For the past several years, we’ve heard and talked a lot about how smart things are getting smarter through Moore’s law and the exponential advances in core digital components.

When the favorite dog groomer and sitter for our family’s timid and particular Maltese left town one week before we were headed overseas, finding a replacement quickly became a household priority. We had no dog care referrals and there was little time to vet the unexplored options. What to do? Being digitally-minded, we decided to turn to Yelp. It helped us quickly identify a groomer/sitter less than a mile away who specializes in Malteses. People in more and more communities are experiencing similar successes. Some expected that off-shoring and consequent “big box” low-prices would be the death knell for local businesses. But online digital platforms are enabling individuals and small businesses to act like large ones, connecting with suppliers and customers wherever they may reside.

A few Digital Alley workers are already craning to see which food trucks will serve their lunch at San Francisco’s SOMA StrEAT Food Park when the French bistro truck, France Delices, pulls into the gravel lot by a highway overpass and shoehorns between Kung Fu Tacos and Bacon! Bacon! Fans all across town are receiving tweets and text alerts about favorite trucks’ locations and daily specials. Food trucks aren’t the most obvious businesses benefiting from rapid advances in core digital technologies. But in both the highest-tech new industries and traditional hands-on small businesses, advances in social software, cloud computing, and other technologies are reducing the cost of identifying and managing a large number of participants in a diverse ecosystem.

On a stretch of San Francisco's Mission Street where multi-tenant housing residents, a homeless population, and employees of the hulking Federal building tensely coexist, a “civic hack” is transforming a vacant building. The two-month [freespace] experiment undertaken by social entrepreneurs, artists, activists, techies, and locals is changing the neighborhood. The truth is that sharing space can be difficult. The quiet, well-equipped home office or garage workshop outfitted with your own sharp tools seems safer and easier, albeit less dynamic. But collaborative spaces offer clear benefits: serendipitous connections spark ideas, learning, and opportunities to tackle larger challenges.

With digital peer-to-peer platforms emerging in dozens of vertical markets, the sharing economy appears to be in its own Cambrian explosion of diversity. Participants share cars, bicycles, houses, clothing, tools, and a growing array of other consumer goods. “Collaborative consumption” is gaining traction among customers and finally attracting the attention of regulators and entrenched incumbents—not just taxi cabs and hotels, but increasingly automakers and manufacturers of other consumer goods that have built businesses on seemingly endless demand for ownership.

After the political rhetoric and partisan saber-rattling of the elections, the fiscal cliff debate, and recent presidential appointments, the country seems increasingly divided. In their book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing focus on one of the long-term trends driving the political rift. As Americans have become increasingly mobile over the last 40 years, they have sorted themselves into increasingly homogeneous neighborhoods, choosing to live near those who share similar beliefs, backgrounds, and socioeconomic status.

In the last few decades, we have witnessed exponential technological growth and change. However, as we enter the second half of the metaphorical chessboard, it remains unclear how that technology will reshape our economy, political systems, and collective future. One thing is clear: in the hands of existing institutions—firms, schools, non-profits, civic institutions and governments—this awesome technology will achieve only a fraction of its potential.

Last summer, the rapper Tupac Shakur gave a surprise performance at the Coachella music festival in Indio, California, to an extremely enthusiastic crowd. The performance was stunning for two reasons. First, Shakur wasn’t listed on the line-up, and second, he has been dead for over a decade. Shakur’s postmortem performance was made possible by a computer-generated image of him paired with extremely high quality projection technology. Last month we wrote about the importance of face-to-face interactions. As technology permeates every aspect of our lives, however, the line between the physical and virtual worlds is increasingly blurry.

Last week we attended the Singularity Summit. During this two day celebration of all things technologically progressive, we enjoyed the summit’s signature cocktail of research, futurism, and metaphysics. Speakers speculated on topics ranging from virtual realities, cybernetics, and what post-carbon life would be like for mankind. As we listened, we were struck that even for this group of ardent technology enthusiasts, there was an excitement and energy that came from gathering in a single room and meeting face to face.